A student at one of the worlds leading ballet schools has come home to Barnsley.

Tala Lee-Turton has just completed her first year at the Bolshoi school in Moscow, but faces a struggle to raise funds to keep her studies going. She needs more than twenty thousand pounds a year for fees and living costs but recieves no grants or government backing.

She is only the ninth dancer from the UK and the first from Yorkshire to be accepted into the World famous Bolshoi Ballet in Russia. But Tala Lee-Turton from South Yorkshire could be about to see her hopes of becoming a student there shattered, as Sally Simpson reports.

16 year-old Tala Lee-Turton from Barnsley has become the ninth British person ever to win a place at the famous Bolshoi Ballet Academy. However, her place is uncertain as her family cannot afford the £15,000 a year it will cost to send her.

Tala Lee -Turton from Barnsley has won a place at the prestigious Bolshoi ballet school in Russia. She's only the ninth British dancer to ever take up a place at the Moscow academy. Chika Temma and Yury Demakov, who trained Tala at the Russian Ballet School in Bristol, said she had a bright future.

We are delighted that Tala has been offered a place at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy to be able to continue the Russian method of ballet training. Tala works extremely hard and we are very confident that this opportunity will help Tala to become a professional ballet dancer. We enjoy teaching Tala. She is very controlled, physically and mentally, and is a very intelligent and talented young dancer